FIONA MacKeown seeks justice for her murdered daughter in Goa but how does she answer those who believe a 15-year-old girl should never have been left alone in such circumstances?

The other day a TV reporter asked Fiona MacKeown if she ever thinks about her daughter.

Considering that this grieving mother from Devon has spent the past month fighting to get the Indian police to launch a proper investigation into 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling’s rape and murder, it was a stunningly daft question.

“I just crumpled up inside,” the 43-year-old former market trader said in an interview yesterday. “And I was also seething with anger. I don’t stop thinking about her. Every time I close my eyes, I see her. I just wanted to say

goodbye to her properly.”

Certainly since February 18, when Scarlett’s battered body was found on a beach in the bohemian pleasure-seekers’ paradise of Goa, no mother could have done more for her dead child.

VICTIM: Scarlett was left on her own in Goa

When the police said Scarlett had come to grief during a night-time swim under the influence of drink and drugs, MacKeown hired a lawyer to argue foul play.

Scarlett’s body showed at least five pre-death abrasions while sand in her mouth and lungs indicated she had drowned in shallow water. Police have now conceded that the teenager was indeed murdered and they have arrested two Goan men, a barman and a drug dealer. The inspector formerly handling the case has been sidelined.

But while MacKeown has been dogged and articulate since Scarlett’s death, her conduct beforehand is more questionable. “Sorry, but I blame Scarlett Keeling’s mother,” began one columnist last week. One web correspondent asked: “When will parents stop blaming other people for what happens to their children when it is their own negligence in the first place that puts them at risk?”

Every time I close my eyes, I can see her

And our own Judy Finnegan wrote: “She left her vulnerable daughter in an alien culture while she enjoyed the rest of her holiday. The astonishing thing is that Fiona says she does not blame herself. She should.”

Fiona MacKeown would be the first to admit she is an unconventional mother. With her pierced lip and tattoos, she looks like one of the hippies who discovered the beaches of Goa in the late Sixties and proceeded to establish their own utopia there.

But that was a gentler age, before the tourists and the big drug dealers moved in. MacKeown had never set foot in Goa before last November, when she arrived for a six-month holiday with her partner – they have since split up – and eight of her children.

Born in Leeds, she was brought up by a single mother on a Bedfordshire council estate. Her childhood home had a large garden with room for goats and a vegetable plot, which was perhaps where she first acquired her taste for alternative lifestyles. But the road to achieving her own vision of fulfilment would not be smooth.

When she was 16 she stabbed a boss who she claimed was sexually harassing her and served a year in prison for attempted manslaughter.

She ran a stall selling Army surplus gear in Camden Market, a magnet for tourists looking for “grunge chic”. But eight years ago she relocated to North Devon where she bought several acres of land outside the village of Bradworthy for £15,000. There was no house on the site and today it contains five caravans and a shed-like building.

HOME: The Devon encampment where the family live

There is no electricity. She describes the acreage as a small­holding but the family depends heavily on benefits and the place looks more like a tatty encampment.

Until last November it was home to MacKeown and her large brood: Halloran, 19, Silas, 17, and Scarlett, by concrete contractor Richard Keeling; Merlin, 13, by market trader Chris Osborn; Kisangel, 12, whose father’s identify is blank on his birth certificate; Isis, 10, and Kincaid, nine, by market trader Paul Schreck; and Trinity, six, and Aurora, five, by floor-layer Adam Foster.

The children enjoyed an outdoors lifestyle with few boundaries. “My mother was very strict and that drove us apart for good,” says MacKeown.

“I wanted to have a more understanding relationship with Scarlett and allowed her some freedom.”

However, there is no suggestion that the children ran amok. Mike Furber, deputy head of the local primary school, knew most of the family.

“I have nothing but admiration for everything she has done with those kids,” he said this weekend. “She gave them choices and I think that is probably what has happened here: she has given her daughter a choice that has had horrific consequences. And yes, it has horrifically backfired, but I think this could have backfired for any family.”

Was the upbringing too permissive? Much has been made of the fact that Scarlett was taking drugs – she reportedly confided to a friend that she had taken LSD, Ecstasy and cocaine on the night she died – and was no longer a virgin.

But statistics show that nearly half of 15-year-olds have taken drugs and a quarter of girls have sex before they are 16. They do not all come from hippy families.

However, it seems clear that Scarlett’s mother was too trusting, blind to the potential dangers and believing what she wanted to believe. She herself admits she was naïve, which she demonstrated shortly after Scarlett’s body was found. “I know my daughter, she wasn’t a drinker. She just didn’t like drinking,” she said.

This was in sharp contrast with the testimony of a girl called Ruby, who said she and Scarlett each drank five Bacardi Breezers, one or two beers and a tequila on the night Scarlett died.

And when the teenager assured her mother that her friendship with 25-year-old tour guide Julio Lobo was platonic, MacKeown chose to believe her. When Scarlett begged to be allowed to stay when the rest of the family went travelling in neighbouring Karnataka, MacKeown left her in the care of Lobo and his mother. “They seemed very caring. I had no concerns about her safety,” she says.

We now know from Scarlett’s diary that she and Lobo were sleeping together. Heart-rendingly, she is said to have told a friend that she was only doing so to keep a roof over her head.

If Scarlett’s mother was too casual a parent, she has been punished very cruelly. The murder in India was nearly matched by tragedy at home. By grim coincidence her eldest son, Halloran, was left fighting for his life after a hit-and-run car crash two days before Scarlett’s death. He is now recovering in hospital, where he is reported to have said that Scarlett never wanted to go to India in the first place.

Back in Goa, with two arrests made, MacKeown is still not satisfied. She has accused the police of harassing her, saying they have questioned her conduct as a mother – even raising the prospect of charging her with neglect – to deflect attention from their own mistakes.

She has also appealed to India’s prime minister to investigate what she believes is a cover-up involving local police, politicians and drug dealers. One man seen with Scarlett before she was killed has not been arrested. He works in a party venue at the beach resort where Scarlett was staying, where drugs are openly used. The club is owned by a prominent local politician whose office is in the same building as the police. Mac­Keown says these facts are all relevant.

Yesterday a British traveller in Goa came forward to say that he had seen one of the accused, Samson D’Souza, lying on top of Scarlett on the beach. Michael Mannion, 35, said he had been warned by a local to stay away and claimed he had been travelling around India in fear for his life. He said he had only spoken out because new officers are investigating the case.

Meanwhile Fiona MacKeown remains unrepentant in the face of criticism. “All I am concerned with now is getting justice for her killer and uncovering this nexus of corruption and drugs money that pervades the police force here,” she says.

“I don’t know why they are attacking me when I’m in such a bad situation. I am starting to think some of the press would be happy if it emerged that I killed my own daughter.”

That will not appease those who think she went too far in trying to be her daughter’s friend and not far enough in being her parent.

But it is possible her greatest shortcoming is her innocence about the ways of the world. As one commen­tator put it:

“Fiona MacKeown is a woman born of an age which has somehow forgotten to teach both caution and curiosity, in the belief that, apart from the weather, everywhere is much the same.”